Romano Guardini

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Priest)
by Georg Heinrich Kirstein
Personal details
Born
Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini

(1885-02-17)17 February 1885
Verona, Kingdom of Italy
Died1 October 1968(1968-10-01) (aged 83)
Munich, West Germany
NationalityGerman (1911)
EducationUniversity of Tübingen
University of Freiburg

Romano Guardini (17 February 1885 – 1 October 1968) was an Italian, naturalized German

philosopher and theologian
.

Life

Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini was born in

San Nicolò all'Arena. His father, Romano Tullo (1857–1919), was a poultry wholesaler. Guardini had three younger brothers. The family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. He attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. Guardini wrote that as a young man he was “always anxious and very scrupulous.”[1]

Fluent in Italian and German, he also studied Latin, Greek, French, and English. After studying chemistry in

Benedictine oblate, taking the name Odilio.[2] Guardini was ordained a diocesan priest in Mainz by Georg Heinrich Kirstein
in 1910.

Peterskirche, Mainz

He became a German citizen in 1911 so that he could teach theology in Germany, a job paid by the government.

Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn in 1922, again with a dissertation on Bonaventure. Throughout this period he also worked as a parish priest at St. Ignatius, St. Emmeran's, and St. Peter's and served as chaplain to the Catholic youth movement. During World War I he served as a hospital orderly.[2]

In 1923, he was appointed to a chair in

Mooshausen, where his friend Josef Weiger
had been a parish priest since 1917.

In 1945, Guardini was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the

University of Munich,[1] where he remained until retiring for health reasons in 1962. That same year, he received the Erasmus Prize,[2] an annual prize awarded by the board of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
to individuals or institutions that have made exceptional contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe.

Pope Paul VI offered to make Guardini a cardinal in 1965, but he declined.[4]

Guardini died in

Munich, Bavaria
on 1 October 1968. He was buried in the priests’ cemetery of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Munich. His estate was left to the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that he had co-founded.

Veneration

In December 2017, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising opened the cause of canonization for Guardini, thus designating him a Servant of God.

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Reputation and influence

Guardini's books were often powerful studies of traditional themes in the light of present-day challenges or examinations of current problems as approached from the Christian, and especially Catholic, tradition. He was able to enter into the worldview of those such as

Nietzsche
, and make sense of them for modern readers.

His first major work, Vom Geist der Liturgie (The Spirit of the Liturgy), published during the

First World War, was a major influence on the Liturgical Movement in Germany and by extension on the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.[5] He is generally regarded as the father of the liturgical movement in Germany, and in his "Open Letter" of April 1964 to Mgr. Johannes Wagner, the organizer of the Third German Liturgical Congress in Mainz, he "raises important questions regarding the nature of the liturgical act in the wake of individualism, asking whether it is possible for twentieth-century Christians really to engage in worship. Is it possible to 'relearn a forgotten way of doing things and recapture lost attitudes', so as to enter into the liturgical experience?."[6] It was his glad hope that after the call by the Second Vatican Council for liturgical reform, the Catholic Church might shift its focus from the merely ceremonial, important though that was, to a broader idea of true liturgical action—action that "embraced not only a spiritual inwardness, but the whole man, body as well as spirit."[7] He himself gave an example of his meaning: A parish priest of the late 19th century once said (according to Guardini's illustration), "We must organize the procession better; we must see to it that the praying and singing is done better." For Guardini, the parish priest had missed the point of what true liturgical action is. He should instead have asked, "How can the act of walking become a religious act, a retinue for the Lord progressing through his land, so that an 'epiphany' may take place."[7]

As a philosopher he founded no "school", but his intellectual disciples could in some sense be said to include

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
.

The 1990s saw something of a revival of interest in his works and person. Several of his books were reissued in the original German and in English translation. In 1997 his remains were moved to the

Sankt Ludwig Kirche
, the University church in Munich, where he had often preached.

Guardini's book The Lord, published in English translation in the late 1940s, remained in print for decades[9] and, according to publisher Henry Regnery, was "one of the most successful books I have ever published".[10] The novelist Flannery O'Connor thought it "very fine" and recommended it to a number of her friends.[11]

Works

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c "Romano Guardini, Beloved Theologian of Two Popes — and Potential Saint". NCR. 15 December 2017. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
  2. ^
    ISBN 9781568541068
  3. ^ Allen, Jr., John L. (28 February 2013). "Benedict's final theologian quote". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
  4. ^ Allen Jr., John L. (25 February 2018). "How Romano Guardini helps to shape the 'Spirit of the Papacy'". Crux. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  5. ISBN 978-0-268-01661-6
  6. ISBN 978-0-8010-3499-2
    .
  7. ^ a b Guardini, Romano. "Open Letter".
  8. ISBN 80-7114-124-0
  9. ISBN 978-0-89526-714-6
  10. ^ Regnery, Henry S. (1985). Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher (PDF). Lake Bluff, Illinois: Regnery Gateway Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 December 2007. Retrieved 8 September 2007.
  11. ISBN 0-394-74259-1[page needed
    ]

External links
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